Photography Tips for Surviving the Summer of COVID-19

1. Track the comet NEOWISE or the Milky Way. Use an app, such as PhotoPills, if you like.
2. Sit outside after civil twilight has ended.
3. Wear shorts, flip-flops and a short-sleeved T-shirt as the unusual heat lingers and licks your skin.
4. Set up your tripod on the deck overlooking the water and winking lights across the bay.
5. Turn on your camera, choosing manual mode and manual focus.
6. Look through the viewfinder and turn the focus knob until the wavering lights blink like pointed Christmas tree baubles.
7. Train your lens above the Olympic Mountains on the horizon.
8. Set your lens as wide as possible, the F-stop as low as possible, and the ISO low, too.
9. Experiment with exposure time: 10, 15, 20, 30, 45 seconds.
10. Experiment with ISO: 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400.
11. Sit in the silence of the camera at work, exposing for you what is beyond the ability of your naked eye to comprehend but is present none-the-less.
12. Listen to the seals growl on the floating platform just offshore, and the rhythmic shirring of tires on asphalt as the occasional car travels down the road.
13. Smell the brine of exposed oysters, beached eel grass, the whiff of the vacationers’ campfire on the other side of the overgrown lot next door.
14. Sit and snap the shutter and stare and feel the infinitesimal scale of your existence amid the constellations, the galaxy, and the surprise interstellar visitor whose tail of fire, ice, and space dust streaks through consciousness as in this moment, the ego is blissfully napping and the soul is reunited with existential acceptance and unconditional love.
15. It doesn’t matter that the images you expose can never reveal the depth of the truth that washes over you. It is the stillness and surety of belonging you most need to capture and store in the reservoir of your heart.
16. The camera is simply a tool, like the breath in yoga, connecting you to the both/and inherent in everything.
17. In 30 minutes, or 45, or 60, go back inside
18. Load the memory card into your computer.
19. Import your files.
20. Click through them cropping, straightening, adjusting the light and shadows.
21. Hope for a single image out of hundreds to carry from this night into the morning, a gift you might offer others cloistered in apartments while a virus runs amok. A tiny JPG flickering in a Facebook feed—a morsel of divine nourishment given to you and through you for the good of the world.